


The Augurey Ascending

by meanwhiletimely



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Thorne & Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Voldemort Wins, Gen, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-01
Updated: 2016-09-01
Packaged: 2018-08-11 12:02:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7891375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meanwhiletimely/pseuds/meanwhiletimely
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>You learn, very young, what purpose you were made for. You learn, very young, who you were born to serve.</i> </p><p>In a world in which he does not fall, the Dark Lord’s daughter rises.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Augurey Ascending

**Author's Note:**

> See companion piece [Auguries of Innocence](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7334881) for the canon-compliant version of Delphi's coming-of-age story.
> 
> Translation into Русский available [here](http://fanfics.me/fic103751).

"Thou art my father, thou my author, thou my being gav'st me;  
whom should I obey but thee, whom follow?  
I shall reign at thy right hand voluptuous,   
as beseems thy daughter and thy darling, without end."

— Milton,  _Paradise Lost_

"He cannot outrace the dread voices of Delphi, the dark wings beating around him,  
shrieking doom, the doom that never dies, the terror —  
Resounding out of the rocky gorge of Delphi, a horror too dark to tell —   
Whose ruthless bloody hands have done the work?"

— Sophocles,  _Oedipus Rex_   

* * *

You are born at the height of a raging storm — gleaming like your name-star; lightning surging through your veins.

The first sound you hear is thunder. The second is an Augurey's cry.

(That second part you make up later, long after anyone can question you — and no one does.  
It imbibes you with a sense of the mythic. It crowns you with a seal of fate.)

Your mother laughs through tears: her teeth on your skin, her nails in your hair, baring your throat to the stars. She lifts you up into the air, lit up by lightning from the window, and already, you feel like you can fly.

From the beginning, a sense that your mother is a violent votary to some Dark god — a warrior priestess with blood on her hands, preparing a sacrificial offering.

From the beginning, a sense that the offering is _you_.

* * *

You are born into a war, and that war continues to rage long after its bloodiest battle is won. 

Your childhood is a blur of manors and shelters and safe houses; a blur of glittering silver masks and glittering green Marks. You are hidden away like an anchorite, kept safe and sacred in seclusion by armies of house elves and Imperiused servants, while the real armies clash outside.

Your mother frequently returns to fetch you still half-mad with battle fever — wild eyes flickering fast between lucidity and savagery, gore streaking her hair and her skin, wand white-hot to the touch. You see others look at her with fear, and sometimes they seem to fear you, too.

It is not long before you understand why.

You learn, very young, what purpose you were made for.  
You learn, very young, who you were born to serve.

There is darkness seeping through your pores, lurking around the corners of your luminous grey eyes, and you do not belong to your mother — any more than you belong to yourself.

You belong to the Dark and its Lord.  
You belong — you know — to  _Him_.

 _He_  casts a looming shadow across your earliest, half-formed memories — from the beginning, you recall the scent of blood and ashes on obsidian-black robes; an enormous, venomous snake coiling down skeletal shoulders and across pale, death-white skin; the sibilant hiss of Parseltongue speaking your name like a spell.

 _He_  is the Heir of Slytherin — a serpent Lord like Salazar, an immortal, infallible snake god with slitted eyes that burn dark crimson, that sear into your soul — and you have been marked as His since birth. You know He will return to claim you — you have Seen it — so you wait, from the beginning, restless as the snakes that follow you indoors to circle at your feet, to crawl over you at night, to whisper in your ear.

One snake in particular —  _that_  snake you remember. Her name, you are told, is Nagini.

“He is watching,” she tells you. “He is coming.”

“When?” you hiss back. “When?”

Nagini has no answer.

“When will He take me?” you demand of your mother, who is watching as you stroke the silent serpent — watching as she curves into your hand. “When will He come for me?”

“When He is ready.” She reaches for the snake with a look like longing, and Nagini moves to wrap around her waist — tensing and constricting, ignoring her gasp of pain. Your mother closes her eyes and smiles. When she opens them again, her features are alight with scorching fervor. “ _You_ must be ready first.”

* * *

Seeing is a gift that you are born to, that you do not have to learn.

(One of your _many_ gifts — one of the blessings bestowed as your birthright.  
You know who is owed your thanks, your debt, your devotion. You know, from the beginning, that your gifts are not truly yours.)

You dream of deaths before they happen, in streaks of bright green light and streaks of red, red blood: so vivid you can feel the spell-heat on your skin as Death goes hurling by. You wake in tears, calling for your mother, and she charges into your mind as if into battle, shattering all your walls until she, too, can see what you have Seen.

Another gift from birth, perhaps: the walls around your mind. Your thoughts are yours, and yours alone — unless your mother takes them.

(Her own mind, you have found, is fortified not just with walls, but with weapons.  
You know exactly who put them there. You know who alone tears them down.)

Sometimes your mother is joyous, after one of your visions. Sometimes she is aghast, face going ashen and pale. Either way, she leaves you to the elves and servants, and does not return for days. 

When she does, she always rewards you: a new spell, a new toy, a new story.  
When she does, you can always tell that she has been rewarded, too.

But although He is pleased with your visions, still He does not come — and when you are seven years old, you are told that you  _do_ have to learn, after all.

Your mother takes you to an island fortress, surrounded on all sides by flying wraiths that make you shiver in your soul.  _Dementors_ , your mother calls them: a tremor passing over her; fingers tightening around your arm in a bruising grip. "To the half-breed," she commands the masked men at the gates — not a trace of that tremor in her voice — and they escort you toward a tower cell, past rows and rows of prisoners who shrink back in fear as you pass.

"You are to learn of signs and omens and prophecies," your mother tells you. "You are to seize this creature's divination for yourself." She touches her lips to your hair — preparing to go, to leave you here alone, because — "It is the Dark Lord's will." The final word as always; the decree you cannot question. The masked men nod in deference, then open a stone door revealing iron bars. You step forward to peer beyond them, at what creature lies in wait for you inside the tower cell.

It is bright inside the tower, sparkling with starlight. There is no roof or ceiling: far above, it opens to a starry sky. There are runes carved into the stone walls, strange pictographs and symbols, marking the days and the movement of the stars. A beast is slumped against them, flanks covered in wounds and scars, hooves worn down into bloody stumps from digging into stone, only half-alive — half-human. Its torso is that of a man with a black beard and blacker eyes, opening to look up at your entrance, inscrutable. A creature you have only seen in stories.  _A centaur._

"Leave us," you order the masked men. You are unsure if you are allowed to give them orders — but they obey as they obeyed your mother, backing away from the bars and closing the stone door behind them. You turn back to the centaur, who is watching you closely with a cool, assessing gaze.

"Greetings, Dark Lord's daughter."

A chill runs through you at the phrase. Perhaps it is the Dementors, or the frigid nighttime air — perhaps it is the declaration of your destiny.

"You are to teach me to See." You step closer, refusing to shrink or shudder. "It is the Dark Lord's will."

The centaur regards you impassively, something volatile shifting behind those blank black eyes. "The Dark Lord's will is an almighty thing. He issues a command, and the world complies. Is that what you think, human child?”

You nod and repeat a phrase your mother has ingrained in you since birth. "He defies Death, and none defy Him."

The centaur snorts softly. "The Dark Lord is a man, like any other. You are proof enough of that."

The sacrilege is shocking. "He is more than a man," you say, affronted. "And I am more than a human child." The centaur's scornful look incenses you. "What can  _you_ know of Him, or of anything? You're just a beast kept in a cage."

The centaur laughs at that, a reverberating horse-laugh that churns your stomach and rattles your bones. "That is true,” he replies at last. “Though in a different future, perhaps it is  _you_ who is kept in a cage.”

“A different future?” You consider this, unsettled and intrigued. “How many futures are there?”

“As many as you can imagine. As many as you make." The centaur’s eyes glint in the starlight. "As for what I know,  _human child —_ what I know is that you cannot begin to comprehend the scope or scale of a centaur's understanding of the universe. What I know is enough for the man who calls himself the Dark Lord to wish me to teach his child — enough, perhaps, for him to sire you at all."

"What do you mean?" you ask, breathless. There is the sense of standing on a precipice — a faint sensation that you are about to leap, to soar.

"I  _mean_ , Dark Lord's daughter, that you would not exist without a centaur's prophecy." He struggles to his feet, steadying himself against the wall. You do not step back. "A Seer, born on the second day of the second month. An augury of death, a harbinger of storms. An oracle to bring forth darkness." He looks up at the sky _—_  at the infinite, innumerable stars. "The stars were clear, and the Dark Lord himself ensured they did not lie."

You follow his gaze to your name-star: _Gamma Delphini_. Your mother points to it often, shimmering near her own.  _Stars are in your blood_ , she says.  _You s_ _hine above them all._

You were always fated for greatness. It was written in the stars.

"Teach me," you demand, looking back at the centaur now with a brimming, brilliant certainty. "Teach me signs, and omens, and prophecies. Teach me how to read the future in the sky."

The centaur regards you warily for a long, taut moment, long enough for you to feel peeled open under the unbroken intensity of his stare. “I will teach you,” he says at last, “but not for your sake, nor for his. For the sake of my herd." He traces a mark on the wall, dark eyes gone even darker. "They will not fare well, if I refuse.”

_He issues a command, and the world complies._

You smile. “Then let's start.”

By the time you are ten years old, you have been visiting the centaur for three years.  
By the time you are ten years old, you can interpret celestial signs, translate the omens of birds, and channel your dreams into prophecies.  
By the time you are ten years old, you are _ready_.

* * *

For ten long years, the Dark Lord has cast a fire that rages across the world, scourges away the ashes, leaves everything — finally — Purified.

And at the end of ten long years, He comes at last to collect what has always been His to claim.

Your mother dresses you with shaking hands, hot tears welling up in her eyes, her entire body trembling, and you know it is not the idea of losing you that has inspired such primal terror within her.

It is the idea that her offering will be rejected. It is the idea that her sacrifice has not been good enough. It is the idea that He will find you wanting.

"Look directly into His eyes and do not close off your mind," she orders now, meeting your own eyes in the mirror as she brushes your hair — seizing it from the scalp, making it hurt. Pain, your mother always says, brings clarity. "Your mind — your body — your soul — all are  _His_ to do with as He pleases. Do not resist Him."

Nagini leads you both into the state room, hissing softly without words. You think perhaps you should speak to her, the way you did as a young child, but cannot think what to say. 

When you step into the room, there is a tall, obsidian-clad figure standing motionless in its center, facing away from the door. He turns at once when you enter, shadows shifting as He moves, sweeping up all the light in the room as He steps forward, darkness draped around Him like a cloak — the very air around Him simmering with _power_. 

He is everything you have imagined, everything you have Seen.  
He is everything.

 _Master_ , your mother calls Him, and she speaks it like an invocation, tongue tightening around the syllables as if summoning something sacred. You can feel it physically, the energy emanating from her when she’s near Him, a swell of pure Dark magic flaring up and _humming_ beneath her skin — and a surge of something else, long buried and twisted and strangled inside of her. Something dangerous — something fatal — something she will never, ever speak aloud. Your mother’s lethal weakness. _Love._

Lowering herself to her knees in supplication, she pulls you forward. When He turns that incinerating crimson gaze on you, something fiery and deadly sparks to life within you: it is not love, but it is every bit as lethal. It is unholy. It is monstrous. It is _great_.

“Delphini,” says your mother, digging sharp nails into your shoulders, “kneel before your Lord and Father.”

You kneel. He spares you a serpentine smile.

"Delphini." Your name on His lips — in that cold, enthralling voice — is a divine sanction. It calls up goosebumps on your skin. It calls up embers in your heart. "Do you know what you were made for?"

He asks in Parseltongue. You answer in kind.

"To serve you." You look up at Him, unflinching — grey eyes bright and blazing. “I am ready.”

You feel Him penetrate your mind without word or warning, and inhale sharply at the shock of it, as all your walls instantaneously fall. His sudden presence inside of you is freezing and all-consuming, like being suddenly drenched in ice water, or stripped naked in the snow. You feel Him probe through every mental nook and corner in a single piercing instant, are dimly aware of your mother watching tense beside you, but cannot blink or look away from Him, cannot move at all. You might have stopped breathing entirely, lost in the merciless red haze of His eyes.

Releasing your mind at last, your Lord and Father reaches out to grasp your face with one cold hand, sharp and white as bone.  
_That,_ He hisses, silent,  _still remains_   _to be Seen_ _._

* * *

The Dark Lord takes you to a mass of great black cliffs, looming out of the mist like rocky giants, waiting to swallow you whole. When you stand at the edge and look over, several hundred feet below you writhes a perilous dark sea. 

"There is to be a storm, Delphini," says your Lord and Father. You look up, puzzled. The sky is as grey as your eyes, but the air is calm. There is no storm on the horizon.  _S_ _ummon it_ , comes His command, coiling unspoken through your thoughts. The centaur's words echo after:  _harbinger of storms._

You turn to meet the sharp, unsparing challenge waiting for you in the Dark Lord's eyes. The weight of His full attention is heavy on your spine, threatening to bend you double. You force yourself to stay standing. You order your spine to be steel.

Closing your eyes, you think of storms: of wild winds and raging rains, of deafening gales of thunder and blinding bursts of lightning, of clouds woven into tempests. When you open them, your hair is whipping about in a sudden gust of wind. Your lashes are wet with sudden, stinging drops of rain. Your ears ring with sudden thunder. A low current of inevitability crackles inside you, and when you reach out your hands to the sky, lightning surges out of you, leaving your veins feeling swollen and hot. 

You let out an exultant laugh, lost on the roar of the wind, and look back at your Lord and Father, standing still in the sudden frenzy — the gales bypass Him entirely, swirling obeisant past black robes. His red eyes gleam in satisfaction: there's a lightness in your chest, a fierce and frantic pride. 

"My oracle," He says. You know the word, by now, its meaning: a Seer of the future, speaking the words of a god. He traces a cold finger down the streaks of rain on your cheek, smile curving like a scythe. "My summoner of storms, my augury of death — my  _Augurey_."

You have studied the omens of Auguries. You have studied the way they fly.

 _Fly for me_ , commands the Dark Lord, rising into the air of His own accord. The storm swells up around Him, robes of smoke and shadow billowing and churning like turbulent clouds. You stare up at Him in awe, and will yourself to rise. When you do not, He raises a white hand as if to smite you from above.

A staggering blast of wandless magic sends you lurching upward toward the stormy sky — but then the ground has risen up to meet you again as He tosses you back down onto the rocks like a discarded doll. Something hurts, something  _cracks_ , but nothing could hurt as much as the cold disappointment in His voice as He says silently,  _Not so ready after all._

Lightning cleaves through clouds, through sinew and bone, as you stumble, shaking, to your feet — tasting blood. You concentrate your entire aching body, ignoring the rain soaking through your bloodied skin, ignoring the pain in your limbs, ignoring the pounding in your head and in your heart. Once again, you fail to rise, and once again, He raises His hand.

This time, He sends you spinning through the air toward the cliff's edge — then over it, levitated several hundred feet above the rocky sea. You are suspended for a single breathless moment, at eye level to the Dark Lord, before His smile is illuminated by another strike of lightning, and He lets you fall.

Storm-drenched black sea waters swirl and churn beneath you as you plummet toward them, unable to distinguish any longer between the shrieking winds you summoned and your screams. You are going to shatter on the rocks — you are going to  _die —_ or you are going to suddenly, rapidly surge up again.

You choose the latter: you reach out to the wet, grey sky. There is a desperate quickening to your pulse, an electric jolt in your veins, and you _rise_. You see the waves recede away. You see the black rocks of the cliff rushing past you in a blur. You soar back to the surface with your arms outstretched like the wings of an angel, or an Augurey. _You fly._

The Dark Lord is waiting, earthbound, when the top of the cliffs come back into view. You land, collapsing, at His feet — unable to speak, unable to breathe, drenched in rain and the sea-salt of tears.

The last thing you feel before the world goes black in an excruciating blur of consciousness is the brush of dry robes against wet, throbbing skin as He lifts you into His arms. The last thing you hear is His sibilant voice, speaking directly into your ear over the clamor of the storm.

"You are worthy," says your Lord and Father, adding silent,  _You are mine._

* * *

In your lessons with the centaur, you have learned of the movement of planets, how they shape and shift the future. Pluto is your favorite, ascendant at your birth. Pluto, the planet of power: of creation and destruction, of transforming and becoming. Pluto: named for the Lord of the underworld, a god of Death and darkness, bringing a young maiden underground for an ordeal that is also an initiation.

In your lessons with the Dark Lord, you learn exactly what Pluto demands of you.

On your eleventh birthday, He gifts you with a wand: thirteen and a half inches, silver lime wood, with an Augurey feather core.  
On your eleventh birthday, He takes you inside Hogwarts.

When your mother speaks about her time there, it’s as if she’s speaking of another life, another world — an inconsequential, half-forgotten time before her Master found her and remade her as His own. But when _He_  speaks of Hogwarts, He is speaking of His first domain, His birthright, His inheritance. He is speaking of His home.

It is a vast, imposing castle, soaked through with Dark magic, in parts still stained with blood. You are greeted at its gates by a sallow, hook-nosed man who bows but will not meet your eyes. He and the Dark Lord speak quietly, too low for you to hear, before the Dark Lord dismisses him and leads you up a staircase that shifts and moves beneath your feet. Corridors and portraits are empty as you pass, and the castle is eerily still: you do not see a single other child.

At a sink engraved with snakes, He hisses  _Open_  — and before you is a tunnel whose end you cannot see. You enter without fear or hesitation, and are swallowed up by darkness.

Alone with your Lord and Father, on hallowed ground in a Chamber of water and stone, you trace the crumbling skeleton of a colossal serpent, then press your fingers to the mouth of an enormous statue: the man whose Tongue you speak in; whose blood is in your blood.

On your knees before Salazar and the Heir of Slytherin — Nagini bringing sustenance and subjects; Nagini writhing satisfied and satiated at your side — you learn the tenets of power, the doctrine of ambition, the precepts of Purity, pain, and pleasure. You learn to obey His orders; to comply at once with His commands. You learn to suffer His correction; to endure His castigation. You learn to cast Dark spells through spasms of suffering, through bloodied lips and aching bones. You learn to stamp out fear until you're unafraid of anything — unafraid, even, of Him.

You learn the price of Death: how to feed it to others, how to keep from being devoured by it yourself.  
You learn how to kill. 

After, there are warm drops of blood gleaming scarlet on your hands, splattered up your bare white arms like pomegranate seeds.  
You lick them off, and smile. 

When Pluto's maiden ascended from the underworld, she was not a maiden any longer.  
She was a goddess.

* * *

You return to your mother and find her savage, seething. There is a rebellion, a rebel uprising, and she is ready, again, for war.

Your mother is not like you, or Nagini, or your Lord and Father — she is not predestined or anointed; not immune to base desires; not an immaculate, sanctified being. She is only a human woman, a woman of flesh and Pure blood.

She is going to die in battle, you tell your Lord and Father — your mother, the warrior star. She has been fighting her whole life, and you suspect she could not stop even if He ordered her to do so.

He does not.

You are two months shy of fourteen when she finally falls, collapses. She was laughing when she died — taken down mid-duel, at His side. Your Lord and Father’s wrath, you’re told, was fearsome to behold. 

She died the way you knew she would, but it’s somehow a shock, when it happens. A disturbance in the firmament; the sudden absence of a star. The Dark Lord who owns her body sets it alight on a funeral pyre — she burns like a supernova, scattering stellar substance all across the sky. The entire time, He watches, not tearing that blazing gaze from His fallen high priestess until she is burned to ashes, until her dust stings your eyes and singes your tongue. His long, bone-white fingers are cold on the back of your neck.

That night, He gifts you with her killer, and watches as you light him up with lightning fire, watches as you map out constellations of wounds and burns and lacerations on his skin, watches as you tear him limb from limb and laugh. Watches — with satisfied, gleaming red eyes.

Your mother was His first creation, but you are His masterpiece.

 _You_ are His brightest star.

* * *

The war is won again, as it will always be won: with your Sight and His skill, with wands and with visions, with undead soldiers that cannot die and storms that splinter the sky. Grey clouds gather ominously behind you, shaping into opaque wings, as you swoop across your first battlefield like a Morrígan — calling down Death; foretelling doom; bringing forth darkness.

The Dark Lord anoints you with a cloak of silver-winged feathers and a crown of avian bones.

You are consecrated. You are coronated. You are the Augurey.

He asks you what you want, and you answer with a prayer: “Lord, I want to make the future.”

His smile is sharp and unforgiving. “What will you make of it, my Augurey?”

“Yours,” you tell Him, reverent. “I will make it yours.”

The ghost of His touch skirts like ice across your skin. It burns like a benediction — sends your heart blazing up in your chest.

“Then the future is yours to make.”

* * *

When you come of age and are unleashed upon the world, it is the dawn of a new era. It is the rise of a new regime.

In a grand, marble atrium awash in green and silver banners and sealed with magical might, the Dark Lord rises from His obsidian throne to address a sea of masks — flanked on either side by two viziers.

To His left, the snake who shares His soul. To His right, the daughter who shares His blood.  
Vessel and vassal. Nagini and Delphini.

"The Augurey is sovereign as I am sovereign," comes His annunciation, ringing out into the marble with cold, reverberating clarity. At His side, you bow your head in veneration, displaying the bird-bone crown. "Bone of my bones," He intones now, touching His wand to each feather-adorned shoulder like a scepter. "Flesh of my flesh. Blood of my blood."

At the final word — the final drag of His wand across your throat — blood prickles to the surface at your pulse point: singing, singeing.  
He reaches out, magnetic, to bring the red stain to your lips.

"Hail the Augurey," He says, so quiet it is almost a whisper, resounding in the captivated silence of His throne room.

_"Hail the Augurey!"_

The cloaked voice of the masked assembly speaking as one thunders through your bones with vital urgency, thick with terror and adulation — and while you are familiar with terror, adulation is a new sensation. The sea of masks caves and curves in a collective wave as they kneel before you, and all around you, the green and silver banners flare up with the symbol of a large, dark bird.

"Hail the Augurey," Nagini hisses softly, coiling around you with bared fangs. Venom glistens on the edges of your feathered cloak, and the fire in the Dark Lord's eyes sears into yours.

 _Do not fail me,_ He warns silently, tracing the bloodied welt along your throat.  
_I never have, my Lord,_ you answer, with another almost imperceptible bow _. I do not know how._

Nagini makes a sound like laughter. Outside, lightning strikes. 

* * *

Your Lord and Father rules: immortal and invincible.

But when He is away — building and toppling empires, making the entire world His own — it is  _you_ who reigns.

You — His link to the future. You — His most exalted creation. You — His red right hand. 

You are exactly what He made of you. You always were.

Others have had to slash and claw their way to power, but  _you_  — you were molded in His image, shaped by His own hands. Precious. Perfect. Pure. Your power was never in question.

You reflect His greatness. You enact His vision. You annihilate His enemies.  
You See. You strike. You soar.

His red eyes are always watching.  
They approve.

* * *

Some say the Augurey has sharp talons for hands and scales for skin; that a bloodstained beak where her mouth should be can rip a man in two. Some say the Augurey's blessing can grant eternal life, or that a man can See his future if he looks into her storm-cloud eyes. Some say that her hair and her blood are both as silver as her cloak, or that she circles the world on vast black wings, leaving tempests in her wake.

It is all true, more or less — as all myths are, somehow.

Let them talk. Let them fear. Let them wonder.

You have His words to speak.  
You have His world to rule.

All of your futures burn bright.

* * *

It is midnight when you fly to the island fortress, when you drop down into the tower lit by starlight and land before the elderly, emaciated centaur leaning wizened against a rune-covered wall. He gives a harsh, pained laugh when he opens his eyes and sees you — gasping out an old, familiar phrase you have not heard in ten long years.

“Greetings, Dark Lord’s daughter.”

The feathers on your cloak ripple in a sudden chill of wind. “I am called the Augurey, now.”

The centaur laughs again — lower, this time — inclining his head in a sardonic bow. “Of course.”

You look up at the nighttime sky, darker than it has been in quite some time. "Mars has dimmed, and Pluto is shining. Have you ever seen it shine so bright?"

"I have not." He studies you, an unreadable half-smile playing upon the edges of his thin, cracked lips. "But I have seen a certain star shine brighter, too. Perhaps you have noticed?"

You wrench your gaze away from the sky and back to the centaur. His beard is white, now, but his eyes are blacker than you remember. "Perhaps I have."

"Perhaps you will surpass him, in time," says the centaur, fading now, leaning back against the wall and closing his eyes. "Perhaps it is you who the Dark Lord must next fear.”

You regard him without feeling. “Still blasphemous, I see.”

The dying centaur smiles, but does not reply.

You bend to breathe into his ear, “I thank you, for the knowledge you have given me.”

He does not cry out when your lightning hits his heart. You can see it for a moment, lit up within his chest beneath translucent skin.  
It looks almost human. 

You will see him in the stars.

* * *

The Dark Lord knows every time you have a vision, every time you foresee the future, every time you predict a prophecy. You are to fly to Him immediately, to advise on what must be done, and you do so, every time — every time, that is, but one.

One vision will not be shared with Him.  
One prophecy will not be proclaimed to Him.  
One glimpse of the future will stay yours alone.

In this particular vision, your Lord and Father has determined to bestow one final gift: to bequeath one final lesson. He places your crown before you. He hands you a knife and a victim. He guides you in creating a Horcrux. There is blood in your teeth — there is death in your throat — there is a recalescent rupture in your soul — and then, there is nothing that can stop you.

In this particular vision, you are no longer merely an extension of His greatness: you yourself are great. You are infinite. You are unquenchable. You rise beyond His magic throne room, beyond His magic empire, beyond His magic _world,_ to conquer distant universes and vanquish faraway stars. You summon stellar winds and solar storms; you shape Dark matter into new dimensions and rearrange the cosmos to suit your whim and will. You are dominion over space and time, you are are an obliterating void of darkness, you are a black hole that crushes and consumes — swallowing constellations, devouring galaxies whole.  _Gamma Delphini_ — igniting, shining, burning. You belong to yourself, and all creation belongs to _you_.

In this particular vision, Nagini and the withered, ancient Dark Lord lie unmoving at your feet.  
Powerless. Lifeless. Dead.

Not even a god, it seems, can live forever — but perhaps a goddess can.

The future will come. It always does. You don’t mind waiting.

You have all the time in the world.


End file.
